An Internet telephone for conducting voice communications with an external device on the Internet is well known in the art. The Internet telephone is implemented by installing an Internet telephone program supplied from an Internet telephone service provider on a communication device capable of connecting to the Internet. Internet telephone programs known in the art include Skype (registered trademark) provided by Skype Technologies, and Google Talk provided by Google.
When a user uses the Internet telephone, the user must complete a login process, i.e., user authentication, for each Internet telephone. Here, by storing user authentication data required for login on a storage device, the communication device can use this stored authentication data to log into the Internet telephone. For example, Japanese unexamined patent application publication No. HEI-9-135293 discloses a telephone set 10 used in a telephone exchange system. In the telephone exchange system, the telephone set 10 stores user authentication data in an individual information storing memory 14 provided in an exchange. When logging into the Internet telephone, the telephone set 10 receives the user authentication data stored in the individual information storing memory 14 and uses this data for logging in. Accordingly, the user of the telephone set 10 does not need to input user authentication data when using the Internet telephone.
However, if the telephone set 10 described above is provided with a handset capable of communicating with the external device on the Internet via the telephone set, the handset cannot access the user authentication data stored in the individual information storing memory 14. Therefore, when performing an Internet telephone call using the handset, the user must manually input the user authentication data each time the user logs into the Internet telephone, resulting in troublesome operations.